100 Bullets #92

Dave Johnson's cover for this August 2008 Vertigo issue speaks in stark, elegant silhouette: a bare-branched tree, its trunk and roots rendered in deep crimson, rises between two suited figures — one leveling a gun at a kneeling third — while those blood-red roots twist below ground into a tangle of skulls. It's a striking visual metaphor that perfectly captures the fatalistic mood Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso have sustained throughout this acclaimed crime series. "Chapter IV: Our Men in the Ravine" promises another tense, morally complicated chapter from one of Vertigo's most compelling ongoing collaborations.